Are Funding Platforms a Possible Future For Anime?

Let me start by telling you a story of a video game company called Double Fine. On 7th February, they started a fund raising project on a website called Kickstarter, one of many so-called “funding platforms”. The idea of these websites is that you come up with an idea you want to realize, but cannot afford, and you let other people donate money to your project. You could say it is a product paid by its customers.

Double Fine had set their pledge amount of money to $400,000, a rather high sum of money. Their aim was to, as they put it, “create a brand-new, downloadable “Point-and-Click” graphic adventure game for the modern age.” Now, this project started on 7th Februrary and will end on 13th March. The amount of money was supposed to be $400,000.

What happened?

In only eight hours after the project’s start, it was already fully funded. $400,000, just like that. Boom, and a month left to go. Today, 4th March and nine days left, the amount is roughly about $2,400,000. Six times the original amount. To put it bluntly, that is a hell of a lot of money.

But, you might ask, what does anime have to do with this? Excellent question! But before that, let us talk about how much one anime episode cost to produce.